


it comes in black and white

by val_kyrie



Category: Captain America (2011)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:31:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/val_kyrie/pseuds/val_kyrie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky wakes up on a Tuesday. Drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it comes in black and white

**Author's Note:**

> Out-of-nowhere gen drabble about Bucky waking up at SHIELD and Steve's relief. Or something.

Bucky wakes up on a Tuesday. It’s the middle of autumn, a grey mist constantly hovering over the city, and he’s lost half of his arm. His best friend is alive and it’s 71 years since they last looked at each other and now he’s saving the world, still dressed in that ridiculous costume. Cars travel almost 300 miles per hour for sport and they’ve been to the moon. Bucky wakes up on a Tuesday, and he knows none of this for a long time.

But he’s learning.

-

It’s soft and white, though a bit cold. Someone, a woman, is singing to him from far off to his right and there are seagulls. He thinks  _Coney Island_ before he even hears the laughter, before he sees the fences, smells the  _sugar city meat_ air.

He looks down and sees he’s in his dress greens, the bronze buttons buffed into a hopeful glimmer. The ground beneath his shoes is white, and that can’t be right, can it, because the sky is also white, and weren’t there children? There’s a loud, incessant noise where a woman’s soft croon once was, and it pierces through the pleasant haze, through a happy call of “Jim, come along now and we’ll get you some peanuts,” and he’s just realizing it was his mother’s voice when the beeping turns into an alarm and he’s throwing himself bodily up, up into the cold darkness. Then there’s nothing.

He wakes up and the first thing he notices is that his left arm is gone. It hurts, aches, burns all the way to his fingertips but he knows like he knows how many toes he has and where his callouses are that it’s gone. They – someone, somewhere, whoever put him here – have attached glowing blue wires to the stump that’s left. His arm is gone, and he wonders when that happened. The war – there was the War – and he grimaces because if some Nazi got the best of him he’ll never live it down.

“Bucky?” says someone, and he jerks at the sudden realization that he’s not alone. There’s a warm hand embracing his right one. A huge hand, a hand that he knows and when he turns his head on the starchy pillow, he sees Steve. Big Steve, strong Steve, the Steve that’s so painfully incongruous to the Steve he used to sneak into Dodgers games with that it still takes Bucky a few seconds to put the two together.

“Hey pal,” he says, or tries to say. It comes out as a husky, thready whisper that sends him into a wracking coughing fit. When it starts to loosen up, Steve has glass of water pressed against his lips. Bucky looks up gratefully, and notices how drawn, tired, and terrified Steve looks, and reaches out with his one hand and pats whatever of Steve he can reach.

“I’m –“ he coughs a little, again, “I’m fine, Steve, I’m awake, are you taking lessons from my mother or what-“

“Christ, Jim, shut up,” Steve has it out in a rush of relief and then he’s been crushed to Steve’s giant chest in a hug that Bucky feels he can’t really return with one arm, and oh yeah. That.

It’s a few minutes before Steve lets him go. His eyes are red around the edges and his nose is that shiny, puffy pink it turns whenever he cries. Bucky has a moment of clarity, seeing that look on Steve’s face, and snorts out a laugh – which hurts, by the way, like a motherfucker. “Come on, big guy, can’t have been too serious. No need to cry about it.”

“You have no idea,” Steve shakes his head, rubs a hand against his clothed knee. “It’s – we’re going to have to talk.”

“Isn’t that what we were doing?”

Steve shoots in a  _look_ , like the kind he gave him when he’d deliberately ignore a small order on the basis of being the Captain’s closest buddy, “It’s serious, Bucky.”

He tries to sit up at that, because if they – if he’s been out for as long as it would take for his arm to heal like that – “HYDRA, Schmidt – they’re –“

Steve immediately, gently presses him back into the pillow, “Schmidt’s dead, but HYDRA still has operatives.”

“Zola?”

“He died of natural causes,” he hesitates, only for a second,”Fifty years ago, after helping us win the war.” He looks Bucky straight in the eye as he says it, which makes it difficult for Bucky to process until –

Oh. Fifty – “Fifty years.  _After_ -“ He blinks. “Ha ha, Cap, nice joke. Though mocking amputees is usually reserved for scummier people –“

“I’m not mocking you,” Steve’s face is solemn, and Bucky feels a surge of fear, not unfamiliar but definitely unwelcome, welling up in his throat. “It’s a long story. But, uh, the year’s 2012.”

Bucky stares him down, noting the ever-present crease between his eyebrows, the sad curve of the hair-thin lines around his eyes, the firm press of his lips and thinks,  _He’s serious_. 2012. That’s – it’s been a while since Bucky’d done any real math, a couple years at least – but that’s 71 years. 71 years, and where was he?

 _Coney Island_ , he thinks, before he asks for a cup of coffee and demands a smoke.


End file.
